Crystal Springs Campground – McCammon, Idaho

We departed Grandview Campground and headed south on the Mesa Falls Scenic Highway towards Ashton. Near the southern end of the scenic highway is an interpretive sign showing a map of the scenic highway along with the history of Bear Gulch Ski Basin. It was the second ski resort in Idaho after Sun Valley (which opened in 1936) and Bear Gulch opened in 1940 and for the next 20 years it was Eastern Idaho’s premier ski resort.

Further south is the area called Warm River, Idaho with a staggering population of 3 and is Idaho’s least populated city (if you can call it that). The river is spring fed and keeps at a constant temperature of 52F even in the winter. We continued on to Ashton, Idaho to the Frostop Drive-In which has been operating for almost 60 years. Ashton is known as the “World’s Largest Seed Producing Area” and has 4 rivers within 10 miles (Henrys Fork, Fall River, Teton River, and Warm River).

We headed on into Idaho Falls and on to Blackfoot, the home of the Idaho Potato Museum!

We toured the museum, which was wonderful, and watched an interesting movie there and even bought a baked potato Christmas ornament! There is a virtual reality headset to allow you to see what it is like driving the combines with the farmers. Of course, Norm already knows all about that. There is also an outdoor exhibit with old equipment to inspect. And of course, there is the Mr. Potato Head!!!

We drove on to McCammon to the Crystal Springs Campground. The campground is about 7 miles west of Lava Hot Springs with their world famous hot springs and offers dry camping and hookup campsites along the Portneuf River.

Campground: Crystal Springs Campground
Location: McCammon, Idaho
Site: 15H (pull thru)
Cost: $56.26
Services: FHU
Comments: A beautiful location but a rather strange setup with lots of strict rules. Be very careful what you do there! See below.

The empty space beside us is for site 15G. They asked us to pull up as far as we could so that our neighbor and our awnings would not hit. HUH??? I think they were confused as the motorhomes would have their awnings on the outside of the sites not the inside. We could not pull up all the way due to being able to reach all the utilities (it was full hookup). Here’s what is looked like with the site next to us empty and then what it looked like after our neighbor arrived. It might have been a problem had it been two big Class A’s.

The campground is very concerned about the grass which by the way is beautiful and impeccably maintained. We get it. So they do not want you putting any carpets down on the grass nor do they want you to have your wheels on the grass, we get that too. BUT there are many sites that are on the grass so people are parking and hanging out on the grass. Hmmm….But they do have beautiful tent sites along the river and nice views all around.

The campground IS absolutely beautiful. It is about 4 miles from I-15 for easy access and no interstate noise but it sits directly on Highway 30 which has traffic noise most of the day. The campground did become more full as the day progressed but was still not full overnight.

The Portneuf River runs by the campground and there is even a swimming hole should you want to get in and cool off. It was a bit too shallow for us but perfect for kids.

We were supposed to have a campfire pit and a picnic table and we didn’t have one with our site. The staff there is young and inexperienced and didn’t know what to do about that. One of them told us they really didn’t know anything about camping (and laughed about working at a campground).

We wanted to go for a stroll and there aren’t many options so we decided to walk the campground road. We tried to take a walk down the Campground entrance road we drove in on and out beyond the entrance to Highway 30 and we were quickly told we were not allowed to walk there. They seemed very specific about where you could and could not go. It is the first time we have encountered that behavior at a campground. We think it is because the owners have a house at the entrance which we drove past and stopped by to check-in and they probably don’t want you anyway near the house at other times just for privacy? Except that we were already there when we checked in. They also had a list of rules which were longer than most campgrounds/RV Parks. We had someone drive us to our site and repeat all the rules to us. It makes us think they may get some unruly campers at times???? Anyway, it made us a bit uncertain what we could do and not do there and were even unsure about sitting outside our RV in our chairs…but we did it anyway.

All in all it was a lovely place but one we would probably not stay at again.